ParentrackWorld: Toddler Nightmares

Tell him that birds are amongst the least evolved animals from the dinosaurs so when you sit down to eat a chicken you're actually eating a dinosaur. Also explain that most dinosaurs were actually plant eaters and not interested in small boys.

I think we are slightly pushing the boundaries of a 2 1/2 year olds levels of reasoning and understanding there

He has a glowing clock, which puts out a reasonable bit of light. Last night we left the lights on in the room, but dimmed right down, which may have helped (though running a set of downlighters all night will get a bit expensive) so we are looking into getting a low powered night light that we can plug in and give a similar amount of light to the room now.

If only there was an Ikea in the Lake District... or somewhere close.... rather than Wigan!

We made a "Monster be-gone" spray from an old spray bottle for our 3 year old. Wifey drew a nice picture on it (monster in a red circle with a line through it) and he just lightly sprayed selected bits of his room before going to sleep. (Tip: don't put too much water in it).

My folks got some dream eaters for us when we were sprogs- some kind of dragony statue that are big enough to be parked in the door holding it open letting some light in.

They told us they would eat any bad dreams that came around.

Nothing scary about a dragon that can reach inside your brain and eat your thoughts.

Story from a friend- their first had terrible nightmares, so they got their son a dream catcher from a craft stall, got the nice lady to lay on the full native american woo thing- totally convinced. All was well for a few weeks, then suddenly he became terrified of the dreamcatcher as it must be getting full of bad dreams- what if they leak? What if it overflows and they all burst out at once? They ended up having to burn it in the garden.

The moral of the story is that kids brains are just as good at creating problems as adults.